Free Republic

Bill de Blasio is standing by his flack – for now at least. The mayor-elect on Monday praised his spokeswoman Lis Smith despite revelations in The Post that she is shacking up with her married former boss — disgraced-ex Gov. Eliot Spitzer. “I respect Lis as a professional but I also respect her right to privacy. So I’m not going to get any further into it,” de Blasio said during a news conference in Brooklyn to announce two new appointments to his administration.

<p>A lengthy profile on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the October issue of GQ may compound his already-contentious relationship with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).</p> <p>In the piece by Jason Zengerle, an unnamed adviser to McCain explained the Arizona senator's aversion to Cruz.</p>

An anonymous White House aide says that the president reaching out to Republicans is a "joke," a waste of time, and stunt for the media. As Ron Fournier of National Journal reports: Obama’s sudden burst of public outreach coincides with a drop in his approval ratings, noted first by Democratic pollsters advising the White House last week and now surfacing in a spate of public polls. This raises the uncomfortable question: Is this schmooze-a-thon a legitimate act of humility and leadership or a cynical public display? I can’t answer that question because I don’t pretend to know Obama’s state of...

Adding another wild-card to the 2012 campaign’s final days, a former aide to Vice President Joe Biden has written a tell-all Washington memoir in which he lacerates the former Delaware senator as an “egomaniacal autocrat” who was “determined to manage his staff through fear.” The book is hardly an objective study of the vice president, however. Author Jeff Connaughton, a Biden Senate staffer turned lobbyist, is by his own admission deeply disillusioned with the capital and embittered about his experience with the man who inspired him to enter politics. Connaughton wrote “The Payoff,” which came out last month, in the...

Neera Tanden, a former aide to both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, had this to say about the relationship of the two presidents: Clinton, being Clinton, had plenty of advice in mind and was desperate to impart it. But for the first two years of Obama’s term, the phone calls Clinton kept expecting rarely came. “People say the reason Obama wouldn’t call Clinton is because he doesn’t like him,” observes Tanden. “The truth is, Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It’s stunning that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people. My analogy is...

A top advisor to President Barack Obama urged Congressional Democrats on Friday to "go on offense" against Republicans on the issue of taxes and argued that the Supreme Court ruling upholding the incumbent's signature health care law should be the "clear and final" word on the issue. In a memo made public by the White House, David Plouffe accused Republicans of "trying to misrepresent" Obama's record on taxes. "We welcome this debate on middle class taxes, and we urge you to seize this opportunity to go on offense to illustrate how the President and Democrats in Congress are standing up...

WASHINGTON – Two top Republican lawmakers investigating the Fast and Furious controversy are demanding the White House make a former aide available for testimony to see whether the scandal reached the upper echelons of the administration, according to a letter obtained by Fox News. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, fired off the letter Wednesday urging the White House to make available Kevin O'Reilly, a former National Security Council staffer who is currently stationed in Iraq for the State Department. The lawmakers are giving White House staffers the deadline of April 4 to respond, with Republican aides...

A former senior aide to GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has decided to "set the record straight" in a 'tell all' post on the Right Wing News blog -- and in the process, has confirmed that Paul wishes "the Israeli state did not exist at all." Eric Dondero served as former senior aide to Paul when he was a U.S. Congressman from 1997 to 2003, and worked closely with the candidate as an aide since 1988. "I've noticed in some media that my words have been twisted and used for an agenda from both sides," Dondero wrote, explaining from the...

Bill Daley vents frustration with Congressional Democrats, RepublicansReuters 3:47 p.m. CDT, October 28, 2011 A top aide to President Barack Obama expressed frustration Friday with his fellow Democrats as well as Republican members of Congress for resisting the White House's domestic agenda. The comments by Obama's chief of staff William Daley, made in an interview with the Politico newspaper, could add to tension that has arisen between Obama and some congressional Democrats. “On the domestic side, both Democrats and Republicans have really made it very difficult for the president to be anything like a chief executive,” Daley told Politico. “This...

GOP aide tells Fox today's WH meeting was "most tense of the week." - Cantor says it "ended abruptly with POTUS walking out." Reported on Twitter a few minutes ago.

An Obama appointee who played a central role in crafting the 2010 health care bill has cashed out to a well-connected lobbying firm, where her first clients are two of the bill's beneficiaries: abortion provider Planned Parenthood and a hospital chain. Liz Engel was deputy assistant secretary for legislation at the Department of Health and Human Services. Today she is a managing director at the Glover Park Group in the health and wellness practice. Her story further highlights the coziness of this administration with the abortion industry, and also undermines President Obama's portrayal of the health care bill as a...

The homeowners were awakened by their daughter, 15, who said the dog was barking and someone was trying to get in the house. While the wife called 9-1-1, the husband got his gun from the safe and approached Foster. Foster promptly threw up on the family's porch. The husband held Foster at gunpoint until the police arrived.

rom the Communist Party USA's Peoples World "AFL-CIO leaders have told a top aide to Democratic President Barack Obama that the current fight in states over workers' rights is "a defining moment" Obama must use to discuss the future of the country and of workers. Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger delivered that message to Obama senior advisor David Plouffe during a March 1 "working lunch" at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Washington. Over sandwiches, potato chips, soda and coffee, toted into the council's meeting room, the union leaders told Plouffe that insistent demands by Govs. Scott Walker, R-Wis., and...

WASHINGTON — Nobody got fired — at least, not outright — when William M. Daley arrived in Nashville in the summer of 2000 to impose order on Al Gore’s foundering presidential campaign. Aides were bickering, the candidate seemed demoralized and strategy sessions had deteriorated into what Chris Lehane, a Gore adviser, called a “salon-like atmosphere” of endless talk and no decisions. In marched Mr. Daley as campaign chairman, with his crisp suits and management style to match, fresh from Washington, where he had stepped down as commerce secretary to President Bill Clinton. Suddenly, strategy sessions topped out at 30 minutes

New Delhi: President Obama's visit to India next week will be his first appearance in the Indian Parliament and he'll be making his debut with his most trusted friend Mr Teleprompter. November 8th 2010, central hall of Parliament, more than 780 members of our Parliament will see what they have never seen before. US President Barack Obama's old and trusted pal, Mr Teleprompter. Mr TP is always by his side through thick and through thin. It makes him angry, it makes him laugh, even massage his neck and he gets very upset if it ever takes a break.

Obama Taps Guy Who Thinks His Tax Credit Won't Work To Be His Top Economic Aide Joe Weisenthal Sep. 10, 2010, 4:27 AM Not a huge surprise: Obama is hiring Austan Goolsbee to replace outgoing top economic aide Christina Romer. Goolsbee's been in the administration for awhile, and is frequently on TV, so this is a logical choice. Just this week, though, folks discovered an old paper of Goolsbee's in which he slams the type of business tax breaks that Obama proposed this week. Hopefully the first TV interview he does will see him asked about that.[snip]

Estranged aide to John Edwards reaches movie dealBy MIKE BAKER 9:18 a.m., Friday, July 16, 2010 RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - An insider's account of John Edwards' affair and the lengths he went to hide his mistress will be developed into a movie, a former aide to the two-time presidential candidate said Thursday. Andrew Young said that he has reached a deal with writer and producer Aaron Sorkin. He declined to discuss the terms of the agreement, but Sorkin confirmed he had acquired the rights to Young's book, "The Politician." "This is a first-hand account of an extraordinary story filled with...

The former chief of staff to Rod Blagojevich says he believes that Barack Obama knew of the then-Illinois governor's attempt to get a job in exchange for appointing a White House preferred person to Obama’s old senate seat. John Harris, Blagojevich’s former top aide, testified during the governor’s corruption hearings this week that three days after Obama’s election as president, Blagojevich felt assured he had a deal from the president that would place aide Valerie Jarrett in the Senate. He offered no proof of his claim. “The president understands that the governor would be willing to make the appointment of...

Sarah Feinberg, a top aide to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, is leaving to join Bloomberg L.P., the company announced this morning. Feinberg, a special assistant to President Obama and a senior advisor to Emanuel, will be director of Bloomberg’s communication and business strategy efforts. Feinberg’s husband, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, will remain in his position.

LA UNIÓN, Mexico — Gunmen believed to be linked to drug traffickers shot a pregnant American consulate worker and her husband to death in the violence-racked border town of Ciudad Juárez over the weekend, leaving their baby wailing in the back seat of their car, the authorities said Sunday. The gunmen also killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two young children. The shootings took place minutes apart and appeared to be the first deadly attacks on American officials and their families by Mexico’s powerful drug organizations, provoking an angry reaction from the White House. They came...